


ain't a talk of 'if', just one of 'when' and 'how'

by proximally



Series: abandoned works [15]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Bittersweet, Canonical Character Death, Gen, Post-Canon, Spoilers for Ancient Rome Sidequest (Rusty Quill Gaming), Written Pre-RQG156
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:02:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27386887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/proximally/pseuds/proximally
Summary: it's just a day, years later, when he finds her again.
Relationships: Hamid Saleh Haroun al-Tahan & Sasha Racket
Series: abandoned works [15]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1981928
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11
Collections: Good Intentions: Abandoned and Unfinished WIPs





	ain't a talk of 'if', just one of 'when' and 'how'

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [original comic](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/709405) by proximally. 



> title from the lyrics of The Crooked Kind by Radical Face.
> 
> idea was from ~january 2020 right after i caught up and drew the linked comic, and was written _well_ before RQG156.
> 
> i deeply apologise for my google translate latin.

It’s just a day, when it happens. Hamid’s in Cairo - partly business, because Harlequin HQ is still his family home and there’s discussions to be had with Curie, but also because he’s trying to take a break. ‘Trying’ being the operative word here, because he still definitely has been talking shop with Curie and now that she’s busy with some crisis or other he can’t help with he’s dug out his old textbooks from storage, just in case they’re of any use.

Mostly they’re not. They’re a decade out of date at this point, and he’d never taken any module on planes beyond the introductory one. Mostly he just sits there in the dusty room with his dusty books and feels inordinately nostalgic. Gods, remember when his worst fear was assessment deadlines? Remember when the worst thing that could happen was a lecturer picking on you when you hadn’t done the reading? Those were the _days_.

And then he flips a page, and it’s right there, clear as crystal. 

_...thanks to the efforts of a mercenary group known as Lolomg (thought to be an acronym for a much longer name lost to time) and its competitors. Lolomg was notable in both their competence and their strict code of ethics, imposed by their curiously elusive founder. Little is truly known about her beyond that she was a Saxon woman named Sasia Husaskingus, and merited such descriptors as moving “like a greased eel on polished marble” (orig.: “sicut uncta anguillam summis de marmore”, Parvus Maximus, 96 AD) and “like a mute raven flying through the Underworld on a new moon” (orig.: “sicut mutus corvus volantem per novam lunam Tartara”, Magnus Maximus, 103 AD). These passages have long been a source of contention among academics, and the translations quoted here are merely a few of the many possible._

_Equally contentious is the origin of her name; ‘Sasia’ is possibly derived from ‘Saxia’ or ‘Saxa’ (lit.‘a Saxon woman’), and as such may have been a nickname or false name referring to her heritage, but ‘Husaskingus’ is more difficult to place. it is evidently not Latin, but neither is it Saxon as her first name would suggest. Some scholars believe it may be derived from..._

It’s all he’s ever asked for.

* * *

(“Look, here - it can’t be anyone else. I mean, there’s no mention of Grizzop anywhere, but… Rome was pretty insular, right? It was mostly just humans. Maybe those mentions were destroyed, or never recorded, or, or maybe it was intentional? Unless-- unless they didn’t end up in the same place... No, focus, we found Sasha, Grizzop’s probably there too, and _we can get them back_.”)

* * *

First things first, Hamid visits a library and ransacks the history section. In one notebook, he compiles mentions of mercenary groups and mysterious foreigners in the years before and after the fall of Rome, and in the other he records names: he might be a university dropout, but he knows academia and he knows there’s experts out there with the exact knowledge he’s after. He just has to _find_ them.

He puts out feelers into the historical community, both his own and through Curie. He visits some more libraries; these less public, accessed by virtue of his smile, or his name, or just the fact that he and his companions are a major reason the world is still turning (he tries not to lean on that too much).

It takes time, a lot of dead ends, and a lot of red herrings. Most of the academics the breadcrumbs lead to are dead, or just don’t have what he needs, and Sasha’s wasn’t the only security company in the business - it wasn’t the first, or the last, or the only one headed by a strange foreigner; it’s not really remarkable at all, except for all the reasons it is. All he really has, even so many months later, is what he started with: a familiar name and a general time period. 

It’s disheartening, even for Hamid - and he’d never lost hope, never let himself give up, thrown his everything into planar research as soon as it looked like things were going to turn out okay. Cel never knew either of their companions’ lost friends, and has never _quite_ understood Hamid’s blinkered focus, but they listen happily when he tries to explain, never hesitate to lend a hand when asked for. Azu, too, has been supportive, but though she’s never really said anything to that effect, he knows she’s never quite believed he’d get anywhere. It’s not that she gave up, necessarily, but...it _hurts_ , to hold on to that hope, and Azu is a lot more sensible than Hamid is. Zolf…Zolf, he’s always had disagreements with. Nothing much has changed.

And then, eight months after he flipped through an old textbook on a whim and found a lifeline, he finds her.

More specifically, he finds a French archaeologist who’s very surprised to find out that her life’s work revolves at least partly around a time traveller - and yet, not surprised at all.

(“This-- Hamid - can I call you Hamid? - you cannot _begin_ to understand how ecstatic I am to hear this. Everything makes so much more _sense_ \-- _Gods_ , suck it, Dubois, the locks at the site _were_ anachronistic, all along--”)

She can’t get too specific, but there’s a lot of her research that’s never made it into public journals and she’s more than happy to share. “We have no idea when Sasia - sorry, _Sasha_ \- could’ve arrived, but the earliest definite mention dates from about 50BC and I, personally, think she was around from at _least_ 65BC-- here, let me just-- there we go! See, about five years after the fall of Rome…” She gives him the coordinates of the place she and her colleagues are pretty sure used to be their base of operations; it’s the Roman side of the Alps, abandoned since the world ended, but probably far enough out of the way that little has changed. It’s been there over 1800 years, after all.

From there, it’s just the _how_. As far as Hamid knows, there’s no convenient time travel spell already in existence, so he’s going to have to get _creative_ (or find someone else to get creative for him, because despite everything he’s really more of an evocation kind of person than conjuration).

* * *

* * *

[...]

“Send ‘em in,” comes the voice from beyond the door, and already Hamid’s heart feels fit to burst. The kid opens the door and ushers him in, but he can’t manage more than a step over the threshold.

The woman behind the desk is maybe middle-aged, her short black hair grey-streaked and crow’s-feet creasing the corners of her dark eyes. She’s not as pale as Hamid remembers - not tanned, exactly, but her bare arms are spotted with freckles - and she lacks the thinness of recent malnutrition and undeath. She looks _good_. She looks _healthy_ , for the first time in his memory--

“Hamid?” she breathes.

**Author's Note:**

> \- it's been ~20 years for sasha, and only 5-8 for hamid.  
> \- resurrection ain't illegal yet and sasha has all/most of the components >:)  
> \- sasha's not coming back to the present day bc she has a whole-ass life here now, but she does get to say a proper goodbye.


End file.
